


the Most Lamentable Tragedie of Edward and Isabella, or 'Tis Pity He's a Vampyre

by volturialice



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elizabethan Era, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Jacobean Era, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Alternate Universe - Traditional Vampires, Epistolary, F/M, High School, Iambic Pentameter, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Period-Typical Cissexism, Period-Typical Sexism, Screenplay/Script Format, Story within a Story, Twilight but make it iambic pentameter, don't let the title fool you this is a jalice fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29328846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volturialice/pseuds/volturialice
Summary: A struggling theatre troupe in 1608. A high school English class 400 years later. A timeless story of girl meets vampire.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Background Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 23
Kudos: 44
Collections: Jalice Week - February 2021





	the Most Lamentable Tragedie of Edward and Isabella, or 'Tis Pity He's a Vampyre

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to Jalice Week 2021: Non-linear. this was my own prompt and in other news I h8 myself
> 
> see end note for specific content warnings!

Dramatis Personæ

CHARLES SWAN, _the Constable of Forks_

ISABELLA SWAN, _his daughter_

EDWARD CULLEN, _a Vampyre_

CARLISLE CULLEN, _father to_ Edward

ESME CULLEN, _his wife_

JAMES, _a Vampyre_

VICTORIA, _his mate_

LAURENT, _Companion to_ James _and_ Victoria

MICHAEL, _Suitor to_ Isabella

ERIC, _Suitor to_ Isabella

TYLER, _Suitor to_ Isabella

ANGELA, _a Maiden of_ _Forks_

JESSICA, _a Gossip_

WILLIAM BLACK, _elder of La Push_

JACOB BLACK, _his son_

_Citizens, Soldiers, Attendants, Vampires, Werewolves, &c._

PROLOGUE

_Enter ISABELLA._

ISABELLA.When that I lived, I spared no thought for Death

nor stained my mind with grim imaginings.

But wagering now my frail, unworthy life

as surety for the life of one I love

must manifestly make a nobler end

than any I could hitherto conceive.

Alone beneath my murderer’s black-eyed gaze,

whose pleasant smile belies his vile intent,

I humbly consign my soul to Heaven.

O, never shall I rage against the stars,

nor tear my hair and bitterly lament

the fatal choice that hastened me to doom.

For Fortune offered me a dream so rare,

so far exceeding mortal fantasy

that even on the precipice of death,

my feeble heart cannot regret my fate.

Now smiles the hunter, like a cheery friend

Now saunters forth to strike his killing blow

And I, of ladies most bereft and blessèd,

must die his quarry, like a luckless doe.

* * *

Jessica Stanley

Mr. Berty

AP English Lit

21 March 2008

**Religion and Feminism in _Edward and Isabella_**

In the classic tragedy _The Most Lamentable Tragedy of_ _Edward and Isabella or ’Tis Pity He’s a Vampire,_ religion plays a key role in the story. Characters frequently allude to passages of the Bible, and sin, redemption, and sacrifice are major themes. The character of Edward believes he has lost his immortal soul because he is a vampire. Although he falls in love with Isabella and wants to be with her, he refuses to jeopardize her soul. The play is ultimately a tragedy because Isabella is bitten by a vampire and then dies. In the epilogue, the Devil comes to collect her soul because she was not human at the time of her death.

Many scholars have argued about whether the character of Isabella represents “an early feminist triumph” (Meyer 31) or just another portrayal of women as passive archetypes of the madonna/whore complex (Pattinson 15). This is because the central conflict of _Edward and Isabella_ is between Isabella’s earthly desire for Edward, which centers female sexuality, vs. Edward’s insistence on preserving her immortal soul, which removes female agency.

The issue of gender in Elizabethan theatre is further complicated by the fact that women in London were legally not allowed to be actors until 1660, so the role of Isabella would have been played by a young boy in women’s clothing.

* * *

Jasper had seen a great deal in his five-and-seventy years, but this was new.

Not the play itself, of course, though that was also new. But he had seen plenty of tragedies just like it— _The Revenger’s Tragedy, Marcus and Didyme, The White Devil, Maria’s Revenge_.

The Rose Theatre was an ideal hunting ground—cheap, packed with potential victims, and there was always a crier at the door to invite him in. He could never quite manage the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy the plays themselves, though. His enhanced senses made it impossible. How was he to believe in beauty when he could see every filthy pore on the hero’s face? Where was the suspense when he could smell the pungent, blood-filled pig’s bladder concealed beneath the villain’s doublet? And no amount of powder, paint, or strained falsetto could deceive his eyes and ears into mistaking the spot-faced, gangly boys of Southwark for the queens and ingenues they counterfeited.

Until today.

On stage, the vampire Edward was rescuing the maiden Isabella from a runaway coach. The actor playing Edward was no unique specimen—swaggering and ten years too old, his white paint caked too thickly over a face reddened, no doubt, by drink. But the delicate, wispy boy playing Isabella was either the greatest actor between sky and earth, a shape-changer of immense power, or...

He was not a boy at all.

The more Jasper looked, the more certain he became. That gracile brow, those slender shoulders. The rise and fall of a bodice cinched too low and tight to be stuffed merely with rags. This was no youth counterfeiting womanhood, but the genuine article.

A _woman_ on the stage. Intriguing. Surely the players were aware that they could be clapped in irons and thrown in Newgate for such a crime. Had she deceived her fellow actors into thinking she was a boy?

Doubtful, thought Jasper, watching “Edward” clutch “Isabella” to his chest as he fended off the wheels of the coach. Chest to chest like that, the actor playing Edward would be bound to notice. A _real_ vampire could never clasp a human woman so without succumbing to temptation—the sensation of her heart beating against him would be enough to make him deranged.

What sort of woman would allow herself to be so scandalously embraced, by human _or_ vampire, and in public, too? Jasper wondered what desperation could have driven these players to cast such a brazen little strumpet as their heroine.

* * *

EDWARD.As if thou couldst outrun me!

As if thou couldst fight me off!

But be thou not afeared, for by the stars,

By the very sun which banishes the dark,

As thou hast banishèd mine endless night,

I swear I shall not hurt thee.

* * *

“God’s wounds!” hissed Alice through her teeth. Her mouth was full of pins, her hands of needle and thread as she flitted about Garrett, the actor playing Edward. Just how the man had managed to tear his doublet mere hours before the first performance was an infuriating mystery.

“Oh, _where_ is Cheney?” wailed Alistair, the director. “We cannot proceed without our Isabella! Who in London shall care to see _The Most Lamentable Tragedie of Edward?”_

“Stop thrashing about,” Alice ordered him. He was already in costume as one of Isabella’s hapless suitors. She couldn’t risk him tearing something, too.

“I have news!” rang out a new voice. Seth, the actor playing Jacob, bounded into the pit below the stage. “Cheney has fallen ill!”

“Ill?” cried Alistair, looking like he might swoon at any moment himself.

“The fever, they say,” continued Seth, still breathless from his run through town. “I couldn’t even see him. Half of Eastcheap has fallen sick.” He looked about the stage, at the dawning dread on the faces of the other actors. “What are we to do?”

“Do? We’re _ruined_ ,” moaned Alistair. “The king himself commissioned this play! Half the nobility have promised to attend tonight! We shall lose our patronage and have to shut down the theatre!”

“Do calm down, good fellow,” urged Garrett with a roll of his eyes. “I’m certain we can find someone else to play Isabella.” His piece spoken, he turned away and began rehearsing his lines under his breath: “‘As if thou couldst outrun me…’”

“Where?” demanded Alistair. “Show me the boy who can learn an entire part in less than one day, and I’ll happily hire him!”

Garrett ignored him, still muttering lines. “‘As if thou couldst fight me off! / But be thou not afeared, for by the stars, / by the very sun which banishes the dark…’” he trailed off, forehead furrowed in concentration as he tried to remember the next line.

“‘As thou hast banishèd mine endless night,’” prompted Alice helpfully, stabbing the last pin back into its cushion. The tear mended, she straightened back up.

Only to find the entire company staring at her with identically quizzical expressions.

“What?” she asked, self-consciously checking to make sure her hair had not come loose and her skirts were still in place.

“I’ll wager _Alice_ knows the part,” piped up Seth. “She’s been here for every rehearsal!”

“And how does that help us?” said Alistair. “She’s a _woman!_ Are we sunk so low as to let the _tiring-house girl_ tread the boards?”

“I’d say we are,” Garret opined. “Was it not you who even now despaired at finding a replacement Isabella? And yet when fortune drops one in your lap, you whinge and make excuses.”

“Excuses!” spluttered Alistair. “If anyone discovered we allowed a woman onto the stage, the Master of the Revels would shut us down in an instant! We would all be arrested!”

“Who’s to discover anything?” said Garrett with a flip of his hand. “If anyone comes around asking questions, she’ll pass as a boy easily enough.” Alice ducked as he reached out to ruffle her hair.

Alistair turned away, a fierce inner conflict playing over his features. “Even so—that’s as may be, but—the punishment for such a crime—too risky—how could I allow—? And yet!” He whirled back around so abruptly that Alice nearly jumped. “You, girl! Do you really know the part?”

Alice wiped her hands on her skirts. “I…I suppose I do,” she admitted.

Garrett grasped her gently by the shoulders and turned her to face him.

“‘How old art…?’” he prompted.

Alice caught his meaning in an instant. “‘How old art thou?’” she recited.

“Seventeen winters,” replied Garrett, in the smooth, slightly nasal voice he adopted whenever he played Edward.

Alice took a deep breath. “How many frosty winters have since thawed, / How many springs and summers bloomed and died, / How long has dauntless Time advancèd on, / and thou the same unchanging seventeen winters?”

Garrett’s face showed utter delight. “‘A goodly while!’ Look you, Alistair, she knows the part better than anyone!”

“Yes, yes,” grumbled Alistair. “But can she _act?_ ”

Alice straightened up as tall as her meager height would allow. She tried to make herself into Isabella, a maiden who had traded her very soul for love, who had tragically fallen and was now facing death with dignity.

“When that I lived, I spared no thought for Death,” she began, more tentatively than she would have liked.

Garrett nodded, and Seth shot her an encouraging look. She willed herself to sound firmer, more passionate. “Nor stained my mind with grim imaginings,” she continued, gathering strength. “But wagering now my frail, unworthy life / as surety for the life of one I love / must manifestly make a nobler end / than any I could hitherto conceive.”

By the end of the line, she had herself convinced, anyway. She could do this. She could play the role of Isabella.

Alistair was still appraising her, but his harried expression had become something calculating.

“Can you fit into Cheney’s costume?” he asked dubiously.

Alice considered. “I…I suppose I could pin up the hem and sleeves…and lace the bodice tighter?”

Alistair nodded. “You’ll do.”

* * *

This was because the Elizabethans believed that women should be confined to the home. Any woman who took to the stage was considered to be of low class and loose morals. For many centuries, even into the early 1900s, the word “actress” was all but synonymous with “courtesan” or “prostitute” (Rosenberg 79).

The real-world struggles faced by Elizabethan women are analogous to the struggles of Isabella in _Edward and Isabella_. Isabella can’t forge her own path, but has to choose between a surprisingly large pool of suitors, despite being boring ( _Edward and Isabella_ 1.2.165-171) and not even that pretty ( _Edward and Isabella_ 1.2.46). Her human suitors represent the conventionality of a woman’s place in society. By choosing to court the vampire Edward instead, argues Meyer, Isabella is making the choice to cast off society’s expectations and embrace her sexuality and power (129).

* * *

Lauren Mallory raises her hand.

“Yes, Lauren?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Berty, but how can Isabella be considered a ‘feminist’ character when the whole point of the play is that she’s stupid and goes to Hell? Isn’t that saying that rejecting convention was the wrong choice?”

“But it was _her_ wrong choice. She got to choose her own future,” argues Jessica Stanley.

Lauren shoots her an icy look. “Are you saying that going to Hell is _empowering?_ ”

Mr. Berty sighs. “Let’s hear from someone else. What do you think, class? Why is Isabella ultimately punished for her choices? Yes—Angela?”

Angela Weber adjusts her glasses. “Um. Because the play was written and performed by men, to reinforce gender roles?”

“I thought the play was written in order to kiss King James’ ass, because he believed in all that vampire and witchy stuff.”

Jessica rolls her eyes. “Plays can do more than one thing, Eric.”

* * *

Jasper was no judge of actors, but he thought these ones were rather good.

Especially the mysterious woman playing Isabella. After her dramatic rescue from the runaway coach, Isabella had doggedly pursued the truth about Edward, even when he treated her cruelly and accused her of lying. Jasper couldn’t really blame him—the last thing any vampire needed was a nosy human on his or her tail. What struck him was the hurt and disappointment on “Isabella’s” face whenever “Edward” rebuffed her, palpable even from the audience. She was so potently vulnerable that a sigh went up among the groundlings.

At last, Isabella learned the truth of Edward’s history from a neighboring gentleman. She had scarcely time to process the information before she was attacked by footpads, and Edward, who had followed her in secret, was once again her savior. The determined glint in her eyes and the stubborn jut of her chin as she confronted him with the evidence of his vampirism were enough to conjure an echo of Edward’s anxiety in Jasper’s own gut. Perhaps it had been too great a risk, to attend a play about vampires.

But what a play! Onstage, “Isabella” was delivering a soliloquy, despairing and delighting at her descent into love and corruption. She did not _declaim_ the lines as so many actors did, with great pomp and much flourishing, but spoke them simply and plainly, with a trembling resolve that made him hold his breath. When she looked at the audience, it was as though she shared a secret—as though she gently and fearfully lifted a curtain and revealed her unguarded heart. Under the spell she wove, they were not mere witnesses, but accomplices in her wonderful, terrible fall. Jasper felt himself lulled into the temptation of believing, despite all his decades of experience to the contrary, that a human could truly love a vampire.

Who _was_ this girl? He would not be satisfied until he knew her.

* * *

ISABELLA. These three unyielding truths I cannot doubt:

the first, that he whom most my heart admires

must be a Cold One, and a fell Vampyre!

The second, that some part of him remains

that longeth for my blood, and thirsts in vain!

The third, that whatsoever Edward be,

my love is his alone, irrevocably!

* * *

There was something peculiar about Jasper, but Alice couldn’t put her finger on it.

The first time he’d walked her home from the Rose, she’d thought she knew what he was after. It was nothing unusual—the suggestion was there, in the slyness of his eyes and the smile that played at his lips when he said _I quite enjoyed your performance, Miss,_ and waited for her to react. Surely a woman loose enough to flaunt herself on the stage would have no scruples about bedding a stranger. But just in case, that hint of blackmail: _give me what I want and I won’t report you to the authorities for indecency._

But Alice was no green girl. She had planned to let him walk her most of the way home, then see him off with her knife. Hopefully she could make herself threatening enough to keep him from selling out the rest of the company. But he had shocked her by being a perfect gentleman, in speech and action if not in appearance. He’d asked her questions about the the Rose, and how she’d come to play Isabella, and who she’d been before she was a tiring-house-girl-turned-secret-actress, and showed only polite amusement at her guarded answers.

So little by little, over the weeks, she had let her guard down. It was hard not to. Despite his imposing height and coolly stoic manner, there was something… _disarming_ about Jasper. Something intriguing, as though he had secrets he might offer, if Alice were only brave enough to ask for them.

She should not have been so fixated on him—she scarcely had time to breathe these days. _Edward and Isabella_ was a resounding success, the talk of London, and droves of people swarmed over the bridge to Southwark every afternoon. The King himself planned to host a private performance—his fondness for plays about the supernatural was legendary.

Alistair was over the moon. The money he was making would keep the theatre up and running for a decade, and a local printer had expressed interest in publishing the play, which would provide still more. He still fretted constantly about the perils of someone discovering Alice’s true identity, but his arguments grew feebler by the day as the coin came pouring in.

The rest of the company thought it was all a great lark. Whenever anyone inquired after the actor who played Isabella, they told him it was a lad called Archie Brandon, their tiring-house girl’s brother. Garrett and Seth had taken to calling Alice “Mr. Brandon,” and inviting her along to cockfights and bawdy houses with them in jest.

Jasper, too, found great amusement in the idea that she was forced to pass herself off as her own fictitious twin brother. He did not seem interested in meeting the rest of the company—he only wished to know Alice. Sometimes she could feel him making a study of her, as though she were some scientific phenomenon. She supposed she _was_ rather an oddity.

But it seemed the more they talked, the less she really knew about him, and the more she became convinced she was missing something. This was not like her at all—she was usually possessed of an uncanny intuition. The whole thing was driving her mad.

On the bright side, it was doing wonders for her acting. After all, what was _Edward and Isabella_ about if not a girl who was slowly driven mad?

* * *

At the core of the play is the idea that love and madness are two sides of the same coin. Edward lampshades this in act II, scene iii, when he compares himself to a drunk and an opium-eater ( _Edward and Isabella_ 201-7). This was a common theme in Elizabethan drama: “Reason and love keep little company together nowadays,” declares Puck in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (3.1.119-21). Likewise, Isabella wonders in a soliloquy whether she is crazy for loving a vampire even at the cost of her soul ( _Edward and Isabella_ 4.2.79-81).

The titular romantic relationship is the source of much contention among scholars, with some arguing that Isabella’s loss of her soul represents the ultimate sacrifice (Meyer 112) while others contend that, vampirism or no, Edward is a terrible romantic partner (Pattinson 83). A third school of thought posits that Isabella’s so-called “true love” was actually secondary to her desire for eternal life, but there is little to support this in the text (Stewart 51). No matter which way one slices it, the play is firm in its conviction that Isabella dies for love.

* * *

“She didn’t even love Edward. Like, not _really_ ,” Lauren declares.

“What are you _talking_ about?” demands Jessica. “If she didn’t love Edward, there would be no story!”

“He’s so toxic and manipulative. He’s always gaslighting her. It’s an abusive relationship, not ‘true love,’” scoffs Lauren, who is going to make a truly insufferable psych major next year.

Jessica’s face darkens. “Oh my God, Lauren, don’t be so pleased with your own, like, navel-gazing pop psych cleverness. Being totally jaded and above it all doesn’t automatically make you smart.”

“Okay,” interrupts Mr. Berty hurriedly. “Let’s keep it civil here, class. Why don’t we hear from someone new? Mr. Hale, you’ve been awfully quiet. What does the text ultimately say about relationships between humans and vampires?”

Jasper Hale folds his hands as if in thought, but he doesn’t seem to see Mr. Berty. He’s somewhere far away.

“That they can only end in tragedy,” he says softly.

* * *

EDWARD. A drunk, locked in a cellar with cheap ale

Might yet resist temptation to imbibe.

But if he chanced upon the sweet bouquet

of finest brandy, how could he resist?

Perhaps this speech of mine hath missed the mark.

Perhaps a drunk is not so apt to fall

As that poor wretch whose vice is opium.

ISABELLA. I take thy meaning well—

thou mean’st to say,

I am thy very strain of opium.

EDWARD. That very fatal strain!

* * *

Alice stayed later and later at the theatre, buried beneath an ever-increasing heap of old mending and new costumes for the next play, _The Three Sisters of Slovakia_. Since the wild success of _Edward and Isabella_ , the whole city was mad for vampire plays.

Her own time on the stage was drawing to a close. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness at the thought. Alistair would keep her on as tiring-house girl, of course, but it was simply too much of a risk to allow her to continue acting in public. Now that the Rose and its players were the toast of London, talented boys would be lined up across the bridge to audition for the roles of the three sisters. It didn’t matter. The youths who played ingenues seldom lasted long in Southwark’s playhouses—they burned too brightly and flared out early. No one would notice when “Archie Brandon” faded into obscurity like all the rest.

Her reverie was interrupted by a knock on the doorframe. “Alice?”

It was Jasper. He had never set foot in the theatre after hours before. He looked different by candlelight—gaunt and severe, as if the shadows clung about him. Alice shot him a tired smile from behind her pile of costumes.

“Why are you sad?” he asked.

Alice shook her head. “It’s no matter.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She sighed. “I was thinking of how I shall miss being Isabella, after the play closes. That’s all.”

Jasper seemed unconvinced by her nonchalance. After a moment he sat down opposite her, pushing aside the bulk of her heap of mending. “You love acting,” he observed. “It hurts that you’re forbidden to do it.”

His words planted a strange emptiness in Alice’s chest. She dropped her eyes and blinked furiously, trying to focus on her stitching. She stabbed the needle back into Seth’s doublet. In and out, pull the thread tight, in and out again, the old familiar rhythm.

“It’s all right. I love doing this, too,” she said. It was true, but her laugh sounded forced and brittle.

Jasper reached for her hand as if to still it. Some primal instinct made Alice jerk away, pricking her finger in the process.

“Ouch,” she murmured, lifting her bleeding finger up to examine it in the light. How embarrassing. He would think her such a skittish little fool now.

But when she glanced sheepishly back up, he wasn’t looking at her as if she were a fool.

His eyes, always so dark, had gone…strange. It had to be some trick of the candlelight that made his sclera look black. Had to be an illusion that made his canine teeth protrude past his lips, so long and sharp and bone-white.

He was looking at Alice’s bleeding finger the way a wolf looks at a deer.

Alice’s breath stuck in her throat. Gooseflesh rippled down her arms. Her heart thumped so hard she could feel her pulse in her neck, her limbs, all the way to her fingertip, pushing out a perfect, round drop of blood.

A terrible spasm twisted Jasper’s features. Before Alice could so much as breathe he lunged across the table, seizing her hand and pressing it to his lips in a bizarre mockery of chivalry. She gasped as he sucked her finger into his mouth.

What was happening? He was…he was… _drinking_. Drinking her _blood_. Swallowing it down with rapacious abandon. Like a vampire.

And the stories were wrong, Alice realized. They were all wrong. It didn’t hurt. It felt like she was floating. A delicious ecstasy radiated from her finger, up her arm and through her veins. Something fluttered in the pit of her belly, like falling from a great height. A flush was spreading over her chest, her cheeks. Her breath came faster.

Jasper turned her wrist in his iron grip, seeking a better angle. His larynx bobbed as he drank deeper.

The sweet, liquid fire coursing through her was almost unbearable. Alice let out an obscene little sound from the back of her throat. She could barely muster the coherence to speak.

“Jas…Jasper…”

Jasper’s black eyes snapped up to meet her glazed ones. A shudder seemed to pass over him. He wrenched away from her, dropping her hand, and shot across the room with a low, wordless cry.

Alice gasped in air. Her head had begun to clear the very moment his mouth left her finger. She clutched her bleeding hand to her chest, trembling all over as she grasped the full truth at last.

“You’re a—”

But she never reached the word _vampire_. In the heartbeat between words, he had fled the room.

* * *

EDWARD.And so perforce the lion lov’d the lamb.

ISABELLA.O, what a foolish lamb!

EDWARD. O, what a sick and most unnatural lion—

drunk on his pain, enamor’d of his torment!

* * *

Alice told no one what had happened that night at the Rose.

She didn’t know why. It was beyond foolish not to seek help. A monster had watched her perform, walked her home, fed on her blood. He knew where she lived, where she worked, how she spent her days. He could find her whenever he chose.

The ghost of him haunted her steps, the corner of her eye. She passed the first few days after the incident in a fugue, waiting for the moment a leonine figure would detach itself from the shadows to come and claim her at last.

But no one did.

The weeks passed like water trickling through her fingers. _Edward and Isabella_ closed, and _The_ _Three Sisters of Slovakia_ opened. The wound on Alice’s finger healed shut, the new skin so perfect it was as if she had never bled. She was scarcely aware of the time passing, except that every day she grew more haunted.

Isabella haunted her too, because she herself _was_ Isabella. The girl who had caught the eye of a vampire. The fool who had been careless enough to love him back. The pendulum swinging between death and damnation.

She missed Jasper. All of the words and thoughts and feelings she had grown used to sharing with him had nowhere to go. It was harder and harder to find meaning in anything she did. In her worst moments, she was half convinced she had imagined it all—that there had never been a man called Jasper who had walked her home, and come to her performances, and fed on the blood of the living to survive. After all, there was no one to corroborate her story, no one else who had met or spoken to him. Jasper had existed for her alone. Perhaps she was going mad.

Trudging home to her empty lodgings had never bothered Alice before. She had liked being mistress of her own little domain, a place for her alone. Now its emptiness was a cruel reminder of just how alone she was.

She was unlacing her bodice when the knock at the door came, an echo of that knock all those weeks ago on the doorframe of the Rose. Foolish girl. She forced herself to re-tie the laces slowly, as long as it took to drive the ridiculous fancies from her head.

But when she opened the door, he was there.

Jasper was standing at her threshold, exactly as he had all those nights he had walked her home. How many times had she stood in this very spot, cursing her own timidity and wondering why he hadn’t tried to kiss her?

_Because I might have noticed the fangs,_ she realized now.

Alice’s heart pounded with something that might have been fear or elation, she couldn’t say. Her fingers curled around the doorframe. It was all that separated them—that invisible barrier that forbade him from entering without an invitation. What would he do, if she invited him inside? He had already wormed his way under her skin without invitation, and lodged there as firmly as any splinter.

His fangs were nowhere in evidence tonight, his eyes ordinary. There was no explanation in them, no excuse. Only resignation.

“Alice,” he said, and held out his hand. He was bleeding from a neat gash across his palm, the mirror image of her pinpricked finger. “Drink.”

The word sounded strange on his lips—not a command but a confession, as though he were really saying something else.

The truth was so harsh and ugly and tender and beautiful at the same time. He loved her. He was a monster and a murderer and he loved her. Enough to want to keep her by his side forever.

She stared at his bleeding palm, at the choice he was offering. If she drank, she could never un-drink. Alice knew, from _Edward and Isabella_ , that Jasper would have to feed upon her blood in turn to complete the transformation. Then he would have to _stop_ feeding before he killed her, or she would die like Isabella, forever beyond God’s reach.

But if she lived, she would live forever.

What kind of a world would she inhabit? It would be different. Things never stayed the same. There would be hardship, no doubt, and suffering and fear. But she would have Jasper, and he would have her. The sheer, wide-open _potential_ of it made her dizzy.

She thought of the night he had fed on her blood, of his expression the moment before succumbing to temptation. It must be mirrored on her own face, now.

She took his hand. She drank.

The coppery taste of blood was familiar from the hundreds of times times Alice had pricked her fingers over the years, but Jasper tasted different. His blood was thick and sweet as it flooded her mouth, coursed down her throat. He tasted the way she had felt that night in the Rose. Honeyed and syrupy, weak-kneed and wonderful.

His low laugh jarred her back to the present. “That’s enough,” he said. “We’ll find you some more later.”

_Later_ —if she lived.

Alice licked droplets of blood from her lips. There was no going back now. He would have to bite her.

He seemed to be waiting for something—permission. Oh. She still had yet to invite him in.

She swallowed the last of his blood. “Come inside,” she said.

Jasper stepped over the threshold. “This may hurt.”

And so saying, he sank his teeth into her throat.

* * *

Although it has a moral, scholars agree that _Edward and Isabella_ is too thorny to be categorized as a morality play (Stewart 21). With its dark themes and sexual undertones, the play ruminates on a lot of questions—the restrictive role of women, the price of reclaiming agency, the inherent monstrousness of the Other. Although Isabella is ultimately condemned for her choices, she goes to her unconsecrated grave with no regrets, leaving Edward behind to experience the most human emotion of all: grief. And so, in the end, the message of Edward and Isabella is a contradictory one: the monster humanized, the heroine made monstrous.

* * *

“Exactly,” says Lauren, eagerly seizing upon Jasper’s comment about the impossibility of human/vampire relationships. “See, _he_ agrees with me,” she needles Jessica.

Jessica scowls, unable to think of a retort.

“Oh, nonsense,” says a new voice. Alice Brandon, who has been ignoring the discussion in order to glue rhinestones onto her left thumbnail under her desk all this time, leans her cheek on her newly-bedazzled hand.

“Just because the story ends in tragedy doesn’t mean the romance is somehow less genuine. Isabella dies because she gets involved with a vampire—sure, I’ll grant you that,” she concedes. “But the only reason it’s a tragedy is because Edward refuses to change her when she asks. Because he loves her too much.”

“Or not enough,” mumbles Jasper from beside her. She shoots him a fond little grin. Mr. Berty wonders whether they’re dating.

Lauren isn’t done yet. “Well _I_ think Edward refuses to change Isabella because he doesn’t want her to be his equal.”

“Oh, she was always his equal,” breezes Alice, beating Jessica to the punch. “That’s the whole point of the human/monster thing—to highlight all the different ways there are to wield power. Isabella had Edward wrapped around her little finger from the first moment.” She seems strangely amused by her own comment.

“But she dies with a complete lack of agency,” Lauren protests.

“You’re forgetting something,” says Alice calmly. “As she goes to her death, Isabella reflects that this is where her choices have led her, and she doesn’t regret a single one of them. She tells us so herself, in the first few lines.” And looking Lauren dead in the eye, she recites,

“O, never shall I rage against the stars,

nor tear my hair and bitterly lament

the fatal choice that hastened me to doom.

For Fortune offered me a dream so rare,

so far exceeding mortal fantasy

that even on the precipice of death,

my feeble heart cannot regret my fate.”

By the end of the monologue, the classroom is so quiet, you can hear Eric breathing through his mouth. Who would have thought ditzy little Alice Brandon was capable of breathing so much life into the dusty old words?

“Hashtag No Rag-rets,” pipes up Mike Newton.

The discussion winds down after that. No one wants to follow Alice’s comments. Mr. Berty lets them settle into casual chatter as he passes back their graded essays. “See me after class,” he orders Alice.

She sidles up to his desk after the bell, as the rest of the class is trickling out. “How can I help you?” she chirps.

The only other student left in the room is Jasper Hale, who is taking an eternity to gather up his books.

“That was quite a stirring recitation you did earlier,” says Mr. Berty. “I think you should consider trying out for the school play this year. It hasn’t been announced yet, but I heard from Ms. Goldblum that we’ll be putting on _Edward and Isabella_.”

“Wow, what a coincidence!” says Alice. She bites her lower lip. “It’s just…I’ve never thought about acting before.”

There’s a strange noise from where Jasper is lingering in the doorway. A sharp, throat-clearing bark, sort of a _Ha!_

Mr. Berty turns back to Alice. “Well, I hope you think about it this year,” says. “You’d make a wonderful Isabella.”

Alice laughs, glancing over at Jasper as if she’s just told an excellent joke. Mr. Berty can almost swear he sees her wink.

“You’re right,” she says. “I would.”

.

**Author's Note:**

> cw for: period-typical sexism (in the form of slut-shaming and oppressive laws,) period-typical cissexism (jasper makes assumptions about alice's gender based on her body,) and blood (just your standard vampire blood-suckin' scenario, nothing too gory.)
> 
> thank you for reading! this was way too much fun to write. if you enjoyed it, you can [reblog the photoset!](https://volturialice.tumblr.com/post/642933009019994112/the-most-lamentable-tragedie-of-edward-and)
> 
> come find me on tumblr @volturialice if you wanna talk Twi-ambic Pentameter sometime.
> 
> there may come a day when I will reformat this fic in a cool workskin to make it look all sexy and Aesthetic, but it is not this day
> 
> notes on deliberate historical inaccuracies: 
> 
> "Slovakia" wasn't a thing yet in 1608 (it would have been part of Hungary), but I wanted the fake play's title to be recognizably referencing the Denalis.
> 
> Jessica keeps referring to _Edward and Isabella_ as an "Elizabethan" play when it is in fact set and performed during the Jacobean era. this was a deliberate character choice on my part. I promise I know the difference between Elizabethan and Jacobean, though I drew on influences from both eras ~~and tagged for maximum appeal.~~


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